Staff Machine Learning Research Scientist

Summary

Join our team at Crisis Text Line, a fast-moving organization with a big vision and critical mission. We're transforming mental health support through innovative crisis response. Our dynamic culture prioritizes empathy, diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a Staff Machine Learning Research Scientist, you'll lead foundational ML/AI efforts to deliver high-quality research insights.

Requirements

• 6+ years of combined training and experience in computational social science, natural language processing, computer science, or related disciplines
• Theoretical and practical understanding of ML/AI/NLP models both for structured and unstructured data
• Experience in programming languages used for data manipulation, computational statistics, distributed computing, and ML workflows (such as Python, Spark, R, MATLAB, C++, Java, Go), and with SQL
• Ability to write clean and modular code, maintained with version control tools
• Extensive hands-on experience with multiple NLP techniques (task specific fine-tuning of large language models, text parsing, lemmatization, topic modeling, named entity recognition, text classification, relation extraction, sentiment analysis, etc.)
• Skills in translating research results into non-technical insights for broad consumption

Responsibilities

• Lead Machine Learning to Deliver New Research Insights for Crisis Text Line
• ML/AI/NLP engineering and model development: lead the design and implementation of custom ML/deep learning/NLP pipelines to analyze conversational data
• ML/AI/NLP model evaluation: contribute to the design and implementation of pipelines to evaluate model performance, accuracy, and reliability; and to evaluate and mitigate bias
• Fully own model pipelines, from data collection and labeling to deployment
• Perform statistical analyses (e.g. hypothesis testing, linear regression, logistic regression, linear mixed effect models) in R or Python to contribute to the team’s scientific output
• Use Spark and/or SQL to clean and transform data, join tables, and create automated ETL jobs to regularly update datasets, ensuring availability for analysis and reporting
• Support or lead collaborative strategic research sprints, adhering to rigorous, industry-standard research methods and documentation practices, and ensuring research reproducibility
• Visualize data (matplotlib, ggplot, plotly) to support internal and external communication of research findings
• Write research grants, briefs, memos, technical reports, and scientific manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications
• Communicate Results & Support Data Storytelling
• Communicate and share model performance and impact in a digestible way with the rest of the team and organization
• Support efforts to communicate results for both technical and non-technical audiences, including ongoing management of organization-wide internal data insights and research requests as a member of the core workflow team
• Lead ML/AI Documentation and Coding Practices on the Research and Impact Team
• Implement industry standard documentation and coding protocols and practiceson the Research and Impact team
• Provide technical assistance, code reviews, and mentorship to other members of the Research & Impact team related to ML/AI/NLP model development and implementation

Benefits

• 20 paid holidays including: Federal holidays like Juneteenth and Labor Day, Election day, Holiday break from Dec 24 through January 1, 2 renewal days, 2 floating holidays
• Flexible paid time off, including: 15 vacation days, 3 personal days, 7 sick days
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits for the staff member and family at no cost to the employee
• 403B retirement plan (the nonprofit equivalent of a 401K): 3% contribution by Crisis Text Line to support building financial wellness, regardless of personal contribution
• 12 weeks paid parental leave (after 6 months of employment)
• Student loan repayment (after 2 years of continuous full time service)
• Family support through a virtual childcare platform
• Stipends/Allowances: Mental health (Monthly), Internet Service (Monthly), Professional Development (Annual), Wellness (Annual), Home office setup (One time/First year)